I was thinking she meant genuflect or kneeling/genuflecting on both knees as before the Blessed Sacrament. Yes?

Settle a debate, won't you!

:iagree: all of that especially the bolded.

have you considered a holy hour or daily mass? I love, LOVE, daily mass. It is quiet and beautiful and so uplifting and loving. I just can't say enough how much I appreciate it. Even if you could only go once per week or even once every couple of weeks at first. Holy hour, too, is a beautiful thing. If you have a perpetual adoration chapel you can just stop by at any time you want. After a while you may feel like committing to an hour per week or so. I will tell you this, though: you may find it easier to commit to a specific hour than keep trying to fit it in. That was my case, anyway. I kept tyring and trying to "fit it in" but somehow it never fit. When I finally made the committment to a specific hour (in the schedule so I coulnd't miss w/o messing up the schedule or making someone late for work or something) it all fell into place. I also love my holy hour. Also, if possible, you might look into a Catholic homeschool group near you. One more thing, I have found the Jeff Cavins Bible Studies at once enlightening, motivating, and uplifting. If I had to choose one thing, it would be either adoration or daily mass . . . scheduled in, committed, no excuses. If you find that your spirit is willing but your flesh is weak, commit to someone. Sign up for an hour; ask Father for a responsibility at daily mass (unlocking the doors, preparing the Mary altar, whatever).

I also like the tea idea. love it, actually! My daughter will love it, too. We'll see about my husband. ; ) On games instead . . . I wish. We can usually get Dad to play games once or twice per week but not much more. We are thankful for that once or twice, though. We usually have our games after supper but I think if we weren't having a full supper (i.e. full, sleepy bellies) we might get more games! My husband definately likes the idea. However, I'm the one, as Seshet says, who doesn't like the idea of my husband not having a full, wholesome, full of love, home-cooked meal until the weekend. I think, though, that if we have tea or something, we'll be okay. I mean, if it doesn't work we'll just go back. Thanks, all!!

oh, did not know that.

Okay, that is a challenge but not to worry! I know it's hard but try focusing on how much better you'll feel in the end. Our own outlook can work against us so work on that focus. I did do a quick search for "gluten free candida diet" and got several hits. Do you think that will be helpful? I'm just getting started with gf b/c of my daughter but I know nothing about candida. Again, I know this is such a challenge for you. :grouphug::grouphug::grouphug:' Please try to keep a positive outlook! Here is something positive. You can make a couple pots of grains and a couple of pots of legumes. Say . . . one of millet and one of quinoa (I'm not a big amaranth person). Then make a couple of pots of legumes, say one of french green lentils (personal favorite b/c they remain discrete little lentils instead of mush) and one of chickpeas (another fav). Do that on one day and for several days you won't have to cook (and isn't that positive!). You can mix and match. Also, one of those sites indicates that olive oil and culinary herbs are candida friendly. If you are eating those, you have it made! One example. But a bit of quinoa in your bowl and top with chick peas. Drizzle with olive oil and some fresh chopped dill. a bit of salt if that is okay. Yummy. Next night have the millet and lentils with a different herb say, oregano or whatever you like. Quinoa, lentils, parsley, olive oil, salt, and an herb you like would be great! Sometimes fresh herbs (available the produce section here) can seem like a splurge but think of all the money you're saving by not eathing other things. Also, during this difficult time, why not splurge just a bit? You are working hard to heal and you could feel good about letting yourself do that.

Okay, but really . . . isn't that almost always the way it is? Don't you find that the omnis and carnis are usually eating up the veggie entrees at a potluck, et c. I do find that to be the case. I usually try to make something that is at once attractive, yummy, and filling so that if there isn't anything else to choose from, we'll be satisfied. Well, it usually goes b/f we get to it. Now, I'm **sure** that is a testament to my outstanding skill in the kitchen but also, I think people LIKE vege foods but for no conceivable reason don't like to say so.

Well, either we're all right or all wrong! I'm firmly in the "crock" camp. Now, heretic that I am, I do believe that it can be a real challenge to eat healthy diet as a vegan. Not b/c vegan is not healthy but b/c sometimes it gets hard to dot all the dietary Is and cross all the healthy Ts. Do you mean bread carbs or fruits and veggies, too?

Well, my two wishes are becoming reality. I wish I could sew and I wish I could play a musical instrument. I'm taking lessons for both now so . . . if I had to choose something else. I wish I could sew better (and wish I had started earlier). I'm glad I can sew as well as I can (which is not particularly well but I can turn out a simple skirt and tee). If you really want to get really crazy . . . I wish I could travel the world and live in a castle. I'm glad I can love my life even though I can't travel the world and live in a castle. I'm also so glad to be Catholic.

Your dessert, I"m guessing, not theirs!:lol:

if you mean google, that is, as far as I know, the only way to do a decent search. I usually do something like "well trained mind forum" fat "land's end" party The internal search engine doesn't work for me at all.

I don't know if this would be helpful at all but . . . when I participated in a goal thread like this before, each month everyone posted to the "I'm in" thread and listed her goals. Then each day she'd update her original post. Comments and chatter were separate threads. So, how it worked was that the person doing it posted for new goals in September. Everyone wanting to participated just replied and posted her goals. Several people posted all the days of the month under that. Each day or every few days or whatever, each person would update/edit her original goal and write a brief sentence re how she's doing. If someone wanted to comment, it would be a new thread with the goal thread in the subject line. something like this: No-Spend Sept: Broomhilda, I can't believe you did that! or No-Spend Sept: Hey, guys, Starbucks is calling me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! or you know . . . what ever. The only reason I mention that is that it made everyone's goals easy to see and keep up with.

how about buying a pop-in-the-oven pie or cobbler and some ice cream. That's easy and yummy. We have stuff like fruit for dessert usually. We really like halved apples, sprinkled with cinnamon, and topped with walnut pieces or halves and baked. When done we top with yogurt whipped with honey or maple syrup (if you do that you have to let the yogurt chill again or it'll be runny). We also LOVE fruit and whipped cream. Plain fruit with no sugar or anything added. Whip the cream with honey and let get really cold. I use very little honey so it's just barely sweet. There is very little work involved. If you use frozen fruit just let it thaw and making whipped cream is so simple: pour, spoon, whip, done. and by the way . .. I wouldn't really feel obligated to make a dessert every.single.night.

Minestrone with bread and olives. and if you ask again tomorrow . . . ditto (except we'll probably have bread and not olives but something else).

We're thinking about changing our meals . . . one main meal in the afternoon and only a snack for the morning and evening meals. On weekends, almost every weekend, we tend to each find something small for breakfast (I usually skip it altogether or have a handful of nuts or something). My daughter and I usually have a snack around "lunch time." Later we have a meal together around 1 or 2. In the evening we usually each scrounge around for something small/snackish and if it's movie night I usually make popcorn. This seems like plenty to us and we all naturally gravitate toward it on weekends. Recently my husband was out of town and my daughter and I, again, without the desire to have a meal at the table with dad, gravitated toward the one meal in the afternoon with snacks for a late breakfast and evening. HOWEVER, I value VERY highly our evening meal at the table. My husband is home from work, we talk, visit, debate, catch up. This is a very valuable time for us but if we change to one-meal-in-the-afternoon on a regular work day, my husband won't be home for the main meal. We've chatted about this and all agree that we like the idea for the food/eating but can't contemplate missing the evening meal together. My daughter's suggestion is that everyone will have the main meal in the afternoon (Dad at work, us at home) and then we'll sit down to dessert together. Well, as you might expect, the idea of fixing a dessert e.v.e.r.y.d.a.y isn't really appealing to me. However, I could imagine something like that idea. Anyone do something like this? What have you done? What have you done to preserve the evenings at the table? I do remember this comming up long, long, ago (I had another name then) but I can't find it. I'd love to know how you do this.

There is also a test requiring a skin biopsy. We're considering that but she'll have to have another outbreak which, of course, we all hope won't happen. Well, I do think I will have her tested in the future but not for now. I think healing is on the menu now. And yes, we're going strictly no gluten, no dairy, no sugar (and we're already vegetarian). When she feels better we can start trying one thing at a time back into her diet.

yes. I do think it would be cruel to do it but I do agree it's something that needs an eye kept to it. Thank you for helping me think this through!

For years and years we thought my daughter had allergies (headach, dizziness, swollen glands, mucus, swollen eyes, sleep apnea, et c). AND' For years and years we thought she was lactose intolerant (yes . . . well . . . you know, very bad tummy trouble). AND Since she was a toddler she has gotten these AWFUL red bumps near her elbows and knees that don't look anything like the text book celiac rash but are super painful, super itchy, and in the right places. AND For the last several months she has had off and on bouts of over all achiness and nearly debilitating fatigue. We put her on a no processed, no gluten, no dairy, no sugar diet. In just two days she felt really really good. Then we were advised to put her back on her regular diet and have her tested for celiac disease. I did. Over the next two days she slept 20 hours! The bags under her eyes had bags. She felt hiddeous. and so did I. I'll never ever put her back on a regular diet again. And having resolved such a thing, that seems to eliminate the possibility of an accurate test. Well, so be it. If she feels great, why bother? On the other hand, I can see that it could be something else. Anyone else decide not to test? Did you change your mind? Why? Tell all!

One day, One hour, and One minute before we did, someone with my same first name checked out from the library the same book I just checked out for my daughter AND the next movie we're expecting from Netflix (The Ugle Daschund). No kidding. That is really true. I wonder if her kiddo is sick. Mine is. She's the one lounging in bed reading Penrod . . . or, rather . . . reading the receipt from the previous patron . . . giving me too much time to contemplate coincidences and piddle around on the internet.

it was at about that age when I really started feeling the pressure and constraint of teaching e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g and it was at about that time that my daughter began to feel the same pressures and constraints. I was getting tired of always wearing my teacher hat and never really feeling as if I had time to put on my mom hat. I wanted to bake cookies and have them ready for after school so we could enjoy each other's company over cookies and milk instead of me harping at her to get her math done or her paper written. I really don't know if this is what you're going through or not but it is what I was going through at that time. Besides making sure our faith life was the most important, 5 things helped. I needed to stop harping; she needed more indy work; I needed to ask for help from my husband; we needed a shift in perspective reguarding my role; I needed to view the more mommy things as just as critical and worthy of doing as teacher things. Harping . . . well, I used to be so fun. I was such a nice, easy-going, fun-loving mom but gradually, as my daughter grew older, I grew harpier. I had to take a look at that and figure out why. There was some mommy/daughter soul searching and, incidentally, it helped with the buy-in later. I won't say I never get harpy but we're all in it together and work together to not dawdle and when I see dawdling, I try to be encouraging instead of harping. I'm sure this is just a no-brainer for so many of you but I had begun to have a problem, I guess. I began to look at my goals for her education and our curriculum to find ways that we could include more indy work. Some things are possible for us and some aren't. I w.a.n.t to teach writing and do not want that to be independent work. I don't think that I could like math being independent for us. On the other hand, vocabulary building and grammar (especially since I teach writing) were really the only things I felt comfortable letting go of completely. That really wasn't much. So, then I asked for help. My husband teaches Math, now. That is H.U.G.E!!! Math was my worst subject b/c it is the most challenging for me while my daughter is quite mathy. I always felt . . . like the shackle to her maths future. I know that seems like only one subject but being relieved of that one, single subject is greater help than being relieved of several others. I know that this isn't possible for many and I'm truly sorry about that because in addition to seeing an enormous load lifted from my shoulders, I also felt that my husband's appreciation of what I do increased and my daughter and husband, while they have always had a wonderful relationship, have only grown closer. I also needed to change my perspective regarding my role in some of her subjects. In many ways my daughter doesn't necessarily need a teacher as much any more. She needs a mentor and ally much more than she needs a teacher for some things. Also, my daughter is homeschooled. That is something I never was and as a result, she is better educated than I ever was. We have started looking at our learning relationship as more of a mentor/protogee for some things (and sometimes I'm not the mentor) and more of allies for others. For example, we take Greek together. We're students together and we help each other along as fellow students. Yes, it's still ultimately my responsibility to provide this course and make sure that she has what she needs, et c but truly, we take the class together and **she tutors me!* This is a wonderful arrangement b/c she helps me understand better and in the act of tutoring me, she practices, increases and solidifies her own understanding. We have an outside teacher for this class and, again, that helps, too. We approach Science in this way as well but do not have an outside teacher. We use Apologia and the text is written directly to her. To study and increase her own understanding, she gives me an overview (sort of a tutorial, I guess) and marks the important information for me to read. We do the experiments together. As long as she tests well, we'll keep this arrangement. We're literature allies. We team up on the literature the world has to offer and tackle it. We read it together, talk about it, and learn about events, authors, history, whatever. Somehow it was easy not to bake a batch of cookies or just settle down for a cozy snuggle b/c we were always so busy. We're really rather academically focused and it just seemed that we were always so busy with that that the cozier things had to take a back seat. Well, no, I think they are important and if they're important they need focus, too. I find that I really need to make sure that I do several things, just loving mommy things, every week even though my daughter is now a teen . . . especially now that she's a teen. Sorry to get so rambly . . . my daughter isn't well and is sleeping so I have too much time on the internet.

We study Latin, German, and Classical Greek. We've studied Latin f.o.r.e.v.e.r, German for two years, and just added Gk (we don't dabble in any of them but of all of them, German is the least demanding, easiest). I'm not sure what your concerns are exactly but I'll tell you my problem: TIME! TIME! TIME! Yes, my problem is time! I could put that another way for you, TIME!!! Does my daughter have problems keeping them straight? Nope. I've never known her to confuse them when translating. I mean, really, loves, amat, liebst, φιλει . . . they're just all so different. I occassionally use a latin helping verb in German but I never use German ones in Latin (so far). Conversationally (yes, conversationally :lol:) my daughter doesn't get them mixed up at all. She knows exactly one person who also studies Latin, Greek, and German and that's me. We sound as if we just fell of the Tower and a sentence can be a long string of Latingermangreekenglishpiglatinubbydubby . . . and we understand each other! I will use any word I can remember from any language I can remember for any gap I encounter. My daughter, who finds this funny, doesn't so much but when she does, it's a joke, not a problem. When she goes to German school (she's a teacher's assistant for the little bitty kids' class) and visits with the teachers or parents, she has no problem keeping German separate from anything else. Here's the thing, though: Giving full effort to three languages is a time challenge. Sometimes I wistfully dream of what we'd do with a spare minute during our school days; how nice it would be to have a lighter school day, school week, school year. I want to study Music Appreciation and Art Appreciation more but we just can't do more than we do. Only for a moment, though. When my daughter reads Scripture in Latin or translates a passage for the museum docent; every time my daughter can speak a few small sentences to an elderly lady at German School and make her smile; every time I consider our spiritual, educational, and life goals, I remember and b/c less wistful. Also, we love languages. My daughter is a pretty mathy kid and loves math AND non-English languages in very much the same way. The homework for Latin and especially Greek is like working a fun puzzle. She feels this about German less and about English not at all. Studying English is a chore for her; studying Latin, Gk, German is a treat. So, we let some things go for that. We have to.

Yeah, I was going to mention that, too. It is considerably easier to let other people take care or not take care of your problems for you. Keeping your littles ones near and doing yourself what needs to be done isn't necessarily going to be easy. Worthy, yes. Easy, well . . . that would be nice. I hope you love homeschooling. I, too, used to be a teacher and sometimes I still get a little twinge of . . . I don't know . . . that feeling that I'm denying her some fun. That's it, though: fun. It's not about the spiritual development, education, the moral well-being of my daughter. It's really just about fun for me. Well, I can be fun, too, and so can you, especially with an 8 and 5 year old. Party on and have a great year!

Oh, you can just consider yourself bookmarked, little lady! Thanks!